John Saul - Nathaniel

"Back here." Eric's voice drifted faintly from the far end of the barn, and Michael abandoned Magic for the tack room, where he found Eric working with a tangle of leather straps.

"Whatcha doin'?"

"Trying to make a bridle for Whitesock."

Michael frowned. "Who's Whitesock?"

"Magic's colt. He's got one white stocking, so we named him Whitesock. I found this old bridle, and if I can make it small enough, I can start training him."

"Where is he?"

"Out in the pasture behind the barn."

"Can I go play with him?"

Eric shrugged. "I guess so. But he probably won't play very much. Today's the first time he's been away from Magic, and he's kinda skittish."

A few minutes later, Michael was staring over the pasture fence. Just yards away, the colt stared back at him through large, suspicious eyes.

"Hi, Whitesock," Michael said softly, and the colt's ears twitched interestedly. "Come on, boy. Come over here." He reached down and tore up a fistful of grass, then held it out toward the colt. "Want something to eat?"

The colt took a step forward, then quickly changed its mind and backed away. Michael frowned, and shook the grass. The colt wheeled around and trotted across the pasture, then finally stopped to look back at Michael.

Grinning, Michael scrambled through the barbed wire fence and began walking toward the colt, holding the grass out in front of him. "It's okay, Whitesock. It's good. Come on, boy. I'm not going to hurt you."

But when he was still a few yards away, the colt once more bolted and ran off to the far corner of the pasture.

Michael was about to follow the horse once again when he felt something brush against him. He looked down to see Shadow, his tail wagging happily, crouched eagerly at his feet. "You want to help, Shadow?" The dog let out a joyful yelp and jumped to his feet. "Okay, let's sneak up on him. Come on."

Slowly, the boy and the dog approached the colt, and this time Michael was careful to do nothing that might spook the little horse. He moved only a few feet at a time, pausing often to let the colt get used to him. Shadow, seeming to sense what his master was doing, stayed close to Michael, matching his movements almost perfectly.

Finally, when they were only a few feet away from the horse, Michael began speaking quietly, as he'd heard Eric do when he was calming Magic. "Easy, Whitesock. Easy, boy. No one's going to hurt you. Look." Slowly he raised his hand, offering the colt a taste of the grass. "It's food, Whitesock. Come on. Try it." Michael inched closer, and Whitesock tensed, his eyes fixed on Michael, his right forepaw nervously scraping the ground. Again Michael moved toward the horse, freezing when the colt's head came up and he seemed to be seeking a means of escape.

At last when he was only a foot from the colt, he reached out and gently brushed the grass against Whitesock's muzzle.

And then, from the other side of the fence, Eric's voice broke the quiet Michael had been maintaining. "Hey! Whatcha doing?"

Startled, the colt reared up, his forelegs striking out at Michael. But before the horse's hooves could come in contact with the boy, Shadow had hurled himself against Michael, knocking him to the ground and out of the way of Whitesock's flailing legs. Michael rolled away from the frightened horse, then got to his feet as Whitesock broke into a gallop and dashed across the field, Shadow behind him.

"Shadow!" Michael yelled, and the dog instantly came to a stop, turning to stare back at Michael. "It's okay, boy. Come on. Come back here!" Obediently, the dog began trotting back.

"What were you tryin' to do?" Eric demanded.

"It was your fault!" Michael shot back. "I was just trying to make friends with him. I was giving him some grass, but you scared him when you yelled."

"Well, you shouldn't've been in there at all!"

Stung, Michael glowered at Eric, and his head began to throb with the familiar pain. "You said I could play with him."

"I thought you'd have enough brains to stay out of the pasture. What do you know about horses?"

"I didn't get hurt, did I? And I wasn't even scared!"

"Just get out of the field, and let me take care of him, all right?" Then, ignoring Michael's protestations, Eric climbed through the fence, and holding the bridle in his left hand, started toward the colt.

His headache growing, Michael watched as Eric began working his way toward the colt, weaving back and forth across the field, countering each of Whitesock's moves with one of his own. Slowly, he began trapping the colt in one corner of the field.

Finally, he moved in on the frightened animal and tried to slip the bridle over the colt's head. Whitesock jerked at the last second and avoided the harness straps.

Once again, Eric made a move to bridle the horse, but again Whitesock ducked away at the last second. But this time, instead of trying to move away from Eric, he reared up and struck out. Eric dodged the flying hooves, but tripped and stumbled to the ground.

Horrified, Michael watched as the colt danced for a moment on his hind legs, then came down to glare angrily at Eric, who was rolling away at the same time he was trying to scramble to his feet.

He's gonna kill him, Michael thought. He's gonna trample him. Suddenly his vision blurred, and Michael's senses filled with the smell of smoke. And he heard a voice in his head.

"Kill him."

Obeying the voice without thinking, Michael focused his mind on the colt.

Die , he thought. Die. Die. Die …

The colt seemed to freeze for a moment, then with an anguished whinny, rose up once again on his hind legs, his forelegs flailing as if at an unseen enemy. Finally, as Eric got to his feet and began backing away from the terrified colt, Whitesock crumpled to the ground. He lay still, his eyes open, his breathing stopped.

Michael's vision cleared, and his headache faded away. The smoky odor disappeared, too, and all he could smell now was the sweetness of the fresh grass in the pasture. Shadow sat at his feet, whining softly. Michael gazed across the field, unsure of what had happened.

"Eric?" he called. "You okay?"

There was a moment of silence, then Eric turned around to stare at him. "He's dead," Eric said. "He's just lying there, and he's dead."

Michael's eyes shifted from Eric to the colt, and he knew his friend's words were true.

And he also knew that somehow he had done it.

Somehow, while his head was hurting and his vision was blurred, he'd made Whitesock die.

His eyes filling with tears, he backed slowly away.

Supper was over, a supper during which much of the conversation had centered on what had happened in the Simpsons' pasture that afternoon. In the end, though, Leif Simpson had put an end to the discussion. "The colt just died," he had said. "It doesn't really matter much why it died. The point is that if it hadn't, it might have hurt Eric pretty bad. So I guess we might just as well chalk it up to providence. It was God looking after Eric, and that's that."

Michael, who had taken little part in the discussion, said nothing, though he didn't believe what Eric's father had said. He'd thought about it all afternoon, and no matter what anybody said, he knew that somehow he'd made the colt die. He hadn't wanted to-all he'd wanted to do was help Eric-but still, he'd done it.

And he couldn't tell anybody. For one thing, no one would believe him. And he couldn't say how he'd done it, because he didn't know. Sighing inaudibly, he decided it was one more thing he could never talk about.

As Janet and Ione attacked the dishes, the two boys headed upstairs toward Michael's room. But when they came to the landing, Eric stopped, gazing up at the trapdoor to the attic. "What's up there?"